In telecommunications central offices, sheathed optical and/or metallic cables are routed from bay to bay in the office via cable racks, which are used to support the cables and enable a vertically-oriented cable to be redirected in a horizontal direction or vice versa. A cable rack generally includes a horizontally oriented beam that is made of steel or other strong material. A cable, as it is being routed from one bay to another either is pulled horizontally across the top surface of the cable rack beam and then down the side of the beam, or is pulled vertically up the side of the beam and then horizontally across the top surface of the beam. The cable rack beam on which multiple sheathed cables are supported generally has a rectangular or squared cross-section, somewhat approximating an inverted and squared “U”, and as such has sharp edges along its length between its top and side surfaces which could damage the cable sheathing as the cable is pulled across them from bay to bay. In order to protect and prevent damage to the cables, before pulling any cables, central office installers wrap the cable with a flexible cardboard-like fiber material, such as Voltoid V-090 electrical barrier material available from Interface Solutions, Inc. of Northville, Mich. In wrapping the cable rack, the installer cuts an appropriate length from a roll of the material, wraps the cut length of the material around the beam, and then secures the material in place around the cable rack using flexible straps or other tying arrangements. By interposing this material around the cable rack, damage to the cables can be minimized as the cables are pulled over it. FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art fiber-wrapped cable. The cable rack beam 101 is shown wrapped in the fiber material 102, which has been cut to length and held in place with straps 103 whose ends are tied together. The sheathed cables 104 are shown disposed on the wrapped cable rack.
Disadvantageously, cutting the fiber material to an appropriate length, wrapping the cut fiber material around the beam, and securing to the cable rack is time consuming and an inefficient use of the central office installer's time.